After that, everything had ground to a halt.

Kate Winston, the host of Springfield Today, had sat there for only a moment before cutting the interview off with a smile. She threw to commercial and we were hustled out of there double time with Jonah cursing all the while.

I figured Gabe was waiting for us in the green room. But when a search of the building revealed he'd slipped our security and was out on the street alone, Jonah swore again. Bennett instructed us to head back to the hotel, and not go after him.

"He's our fucking brother," Finn had growled, but a look from Jonah sent him off muttering to the limo.

"Shit," I whispered as I looked out the window of the hired car. We were supposed to be playing right now. Force of habit had me tapping out the keyboard parts of 'Girl Crazy' on my knee as we slid though traffic back to our hotel.

We'd barely settled back in the penthouse suite when the head of security knocked briskly on the door. "We got him," he intoned. "He was at..." He paused and then spoke into his headset. "Confirm he was found at a jewelry store?"

"The fuck?" Finn mumbled, sitting up straighter as the security guy nodded.

"A jewelry store?" Jonah repeated. "What was he doing at a jewelry store?"

"Unknown, Mr. King. But we sent a car. He's on his way back here now."

"I'm going to kill him." Jonah was pacing. "What the fuck is going on with him?"

I looked down, hating the simmering tension and grateful that the security guy wasn't waiting to be dismissed. When he shut the door behind him, I closed my eyes.

People think I'm spacey. That I don't pay attention. A lot of the time they repeat themselves, assuming that I haven't been listening.

I'm always listening though. Even when I wish I could tune my brothers out, it's like this extra sense. Smell, taste, touch, vision, hearing...and knowing where each of my three brothers were. Both in the physical sense and in the "where are you right now on that?" sense.

And right now I knew exactly where Gabe was. Both in the physical sense of him coming back to the hotel.

And in the mental sense of why he'd run off.

"A jewelry store," I said slowly, looking up at Finn. "Fuck."

Finn had the "where you at" sense, but just for me. I couldn't so much as sneeze without my twin having a sarcastic comment to make about it. He was up my ass so far I'd need a crowbar to get him loose. He knew what I knew the moment I knew it. "Fuck, he agreed.

"What?" Jonah asked, but Finn and I were deep in 'finish each other's thoughts' mode with no room for older brothers who weren't us. This wasn't a conversation we were ready to have until we knew we were agreement.

"You think he's gonna do it?" Finn asked.

"Hope not," I murmured, keeping my voice low.

"Why not?"

"Really?"

He shrugged. "He seems happy with her."

"Yeah, I suppose." There was a twinge of something in my chest. Words came up and then died, and then tried to come up again only to die once more.

The Quiet One. That was what they called me. But it wasn't that I had nothing to say. It's that I had too much to say. It got jumbled in my head and only Finn seemed to get that. "You think she's a gold digger," he supplied.

I winced. It was a shitty thing to think and an even shittier thing to say, but Finn wasn't a 'hold your punches' kind of guy. "Who knows?" I shrugged, trying to smooth out the rough edges of his words. "Not me."

"Are you guys talking about Noelle?" Jonah tried to ask.

Finn ignored him. "But you don't like her anyway," he grilled me.

"And you do?"

"She's okay." He rolled his shoulders back. "Not my type."

"You're talking about Noelle," Jonah declared, sounding proud about his powers of deduction.

I was still looking at Finn, trying to figure out what I was feeling by testing my twin's feelings. "Not his type either, though."

"Why not? She's the only chick he's been with since forever."

"Only a year."

Finn seemed supremely casual, but he had a tell he didn't know about. When he was bothered by something, he stood on one leg. Like a fucking flamingo. Always had. Like he was too agitated to commit to having both feet on the ground. Like he needed the option to flee. "That's a long time," he said, shifting so that he stood on his right foot. He lifted his left leg.

He was bothered. He hated it too.

I took a deep breath. It was settled. "Yes," I finally said to Jonah. "We're talking about Noelle."

Jonah was still clueless. When it came to being a King Brother, he was an A student, but when it came to being an actual brother, he was kind of clueless. "What about her?" he wondered.

I swallowed. Once I put it into words, it made it real. That's another reason I preferred to keep quiet. "Gabe's gonna ask her to marry him," I said slowly. "He just ran off to get a ring."

Jonah looked like I'd poked him between the eyes. For a moment I wondered who he was actually angry with. Gabe or me.

Then he shook his head. "No. That can't happen."

"I know."

"How do we stop this?"

I tapped my fingers on my knee. I wished like hell I had the answers my brothers always imagined I had. But this one was beyond me. "I don't know."